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Victor Fleming: a forgotten filmmaker
According to Denby, "Clark Gable didn't like the script, and director George Cukor couldn't handle enormous events like the burning and rebuilding of Atlanta." He was fired by David O. Selznick, who then hired Victor Fleming, who also was editing "The Wizard of Oz."
"This pleased Gable," Denby says, "but distressed Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland." Fleming's talent was just right for both "Gone with the Wind" and "Wizard." Both films are very likely the most widely seen movies in American film history - not just good movies, but films that have entered the unconscious of generations of moviegoers as revered classics. After 70 years, they still are popular.
"In the 1960s, the auteur-theory critics went wild over Cukor, Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Josef von Sternberg, Frank Capra and others, but ignored Fleming."
"Gone with the Wind," with its happy plantation slaves posed against reddening skies, has its enraging and embarrassing moments.
"Racism is, regrettably, part of the nation's collective past. However, what remains modern in the film is the central battles of wills between Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara and Gable's Rhett Butler, each seeking the upper hand." Margaret Mitchell set up the conflict, but it was Fleming who got the two actors to embody it.
As for "The Wizard of Oz," its combined freedom and unease, happiness and fear, has become a universally shared vision of the imagination itself. It's time for Fleming's contribution to be lifted out of the shadows.
When summoned by Selznick, Fleming hadn't read Mitchell's novel, but he read the screenplay and told the producer, "the script is no damned good."
Fleming insisted. At one time or another, 15 writers had worked on the movie. Finally, with an enormous and expensive cast sitting around every day while nothing happened, Selznick called in Ben Hecht, the finest screenwriter of the time. He agreed to work on the script as long as he didn't have to read the novel. Selznick told him the story, but Hecht said he still had nothing to go on.
"So Selznick and Fleming read aloud from the original script. Selznick read the role of Scarlett and Fleming read Rhett's hard-nosed role. They did this all day and night for almost a week," then they were ready to go.
"Fleming's presence made Gable comfortable for the first time.
He hadn't played the role of a man like Rhett, who could tell Scarlett or any woman to 'shut up,' and slap her if need be. Gable gave the best performance of his career," Denby writes.
The same can be said of Leigh.
When she got irritated on the set, Fleming told her that as far as he was concerned, she could go back to Britain anytime she pleased. Suddenly, she became Scarlett.
She wasn't going to let Fleming run her off.
As the filming progressed by day, Fleming supervised the editing of "The Wizard of Oz" at night.
"Fleming's way with actors brought out their best," Denby notes.
For example, when hard-drinking Spencer Tracy went on a bender when he was supposed to show up for the first day of shooting on "Captains Courageous," Fleming arrived on the set with a case of Scotch.
According to Tracy, Fleming told him to go ahead and drink up the whole case, because he was tired of waiting for him. Tracy sobered up fast and gave a wonderful performance.
Charlie Langdon is the Herald's senior critic. He can be reached at langdons@gobrainstorm.net.
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